Founded in 1821, Amherst was intended to be a successor to both Williams College, which was then struggling to remain open, and Amherst Academy, a secondary school
which educated, among others, Emily Dickinson.
Origin of name
Amherst Academy and Amherst College were both named for the town of Amherst, which in turn was named for Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commanding general of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War. Lord Jeffrey Amherst is now notorious for
his comments, in a letter to a peer, about spreading smallpox-infected blankets
among native Americans.
Amherst Academy
"Amherst Academy was the mother of Amherst College," according to William S. Tyler, who wrote two comprehensive histories of
Amherst College. Funds were raised for the Academy in 1812, and the Academy went into operation in December 1814.On November 18, 1817, a project was
adopted at the Academy to raise funds for the free instruction of "indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who
shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the Christian ministry." This required a substantial
investment from benefactors.During the fundraising for the project, it became clear that without larger designs, it would be impossible to raise
sufficient funds. This led the committee overseeing the project to conclude that a new institution should be created. On August 18, 1818, the Amherst Academy board of
trustees accepted this conclusion and began building a new college.
Williams College
According to Tyler:Moore, however, still believed that Williamstown was an unsuitable location for a college, and with the advent of Amherst College,
was elected its first president on May 8, 1821.At its opening, Amherst had forty-seven students. Fifteen of these had followed Moore from Williams College. Those fifteen
represented about one-third of the whole number at Amherst, and about one-fifth of the whole number in the three classes to which
they belonged in Williams College. President Moore died on June 29, 1823, and was replaced with a Williams College trustee, Heman Humphrey.For two years in the mid-1830's, Amherst was the second largest college in the United States, second only to Yale. In 1835, Amherst attempted to create a course of study parallel to the
classical liberal arts education. This parallel course focused less on Greek and Latin, instead focusing on English, French, Spanish, chemistry,
economics, etc. The parallel course did not take hold, however, until the next
century.Williams alumni are fond of an apocryphal story ascribing the removal of books from the Williams College library to Amherst
College, but there is no contemporaneous evidence to verify the story. In 1995, Williams
president Henry Payne declared the
story false, but it continues to propagate.Academic hoods in the United States are traditionally lined with the official colors of the school, in theory so watchers can
tell where the hood wearer earned his or her degree. Williams' official color is purple (its teams are called "The Purple Cows"),
where Amherst's are purple with a white stripe or chevron, it is said to signify that Amherst was in some way born of
Williams.
Presidents of the College
- Zephaniah Swift Moore, 1821-1823
- Heman Humphrey,
1823-1845
- Edward Hitchcock, 1845-1854
- William
Augustus Stearns, 1854-1876
- Julius Hawley Seelye, 1876-1890
- Merrill Edwards
Gates, 1890-1899
- George Harris,
1899-1912
- Alexander Meiklejohn, 1912-1924
- George Daniel
Olds, 1924-1927
- Arthur Stanley
Pease, 1927-1932
- Stanley King, 1932-1946
- Charles W. Cole,
1946-1960
- Calvin Plimpton,
1960-1971
- John William Ward, 1971-1979
- Julian Gibbs, 1979-1983
- Peter R. Pouncey,
1984-1994
- Tom Gerety, 1994-2003
- Anthony W. Marx,
2003-